Project Summary ? Pilot Projects Core The objectives of the pilot project core are to provide the funding for projects that will test new, significant, innovative and provocative hypotheses. These projects will provide the opportunity for scholars to use these preliminary data in an expanded investigation funded by external grant submissions. In addition, the pilot program allows for the upward career trajectory for new young scientists with cutting edge ideas to move forward within the academic research community supporting drug abuse research. Funding will be provided to several categories of investigators: young investigators, investigators who have been funded by external sources for their work in the drug abuse field but have new collaborations and hypotheses that require preliminary testing before seeking external funding, or investigators who have been successfully working in another area of biomedical research and have a novel project that requires preliminary data to transition to the area of drug abuse research. Collaborative projects among scholars from more than one of these groups will be given priority for funding. Scholars from throughout the university will be encouraged to participate in this program and the Dean of the School of Medicine, the Dean of the School of Pharmacy, and the Vice President for Research and Innovation have committed to provide matching funds for all pilot projects funded. The scholars funded by this mechanism will have an advantage in seeking support from the VCU School of Medicine Research Funding Program, the campus-wide A.D. Williams Research Program and the VCU President's Research Initiative Program. All levels of the university administration will continue to be committed to support drug abuse researchers through this Center of Excellence. Historically, it is impressive that scholars supported by the pilot project programs in the past have had at least a three-fold higher success rate for funding their external (NIH, etc.) applications than the national average. Thus, the pilot programs not only lead to increased prevalence of funding for such novel projects, but significantly more collaborative scientific projects.